Hajja Yamina, who lives in the city of Mohammedia, east of the capital, Rabat, did not give up her hope of “warmly embracing” her sister, who lives in the city of Tlemcen, western Algeria, after they stopped exchanging visits since 2013, but she described Algeria’s decision to impose a visa on Moroccans as “another burden that… “It reduces the opportunities for family communication between relatives of the two countries.”
Today, Yamina is 81 years old, and her health was able to withstand the hardships of the long journey that she began 11 years ago from Casablanca Airport towards the capital of western Algeria, Oran, and then traveling overland towards Tlemcen, and she is seventy years old.
Yamina described that trip to Magharebia Voices, saying, “The longing to meet each other made me forget the troubles of traveling. I could not believe that I was hugging my sister, who always reminds me of my late mother, whom I saw for the last time, before her death, in 1992, when I visited her across the land border.”
This was before Algeria decided to close its airspace to all Moroccan civilian and military aircraft following the severing of its diplomatic relations with Rabat in August 2021, in the context of political tensions, which forced nationals of the two countries wishing to move between Algeria and Morocco to travel to an intermediary country.
Algeria announces the imposition of an entry visa on Moroccans
Algeria decided to impose an entry visa to its territory on citizens holding a Moroccan passport, according to a statement by the Algerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accusing Rabat of exploiting the absence of a visa to try to undermine the stability of the country.
andAlgeria closed its land borders In August 1994, in response to Morocco’s decision to impose a visa on its nationals unilaterally, following the bombing of the Asni Hotel in Marrakesh, which Algeria was accused of being behind, which Algeria denies.
Algeria abolished the visa system for holders of a Moroccan passport in 2005, by decision of former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, following Rabat’s decision to unilaterally re-cancel the visa for Algerians in 2004.
Yamina ends her intermittent speech with the phrase, “They are added to their worries,” and she accompanied it with a long sigh that conveyed all the grief and pain of parting with relatives, as Moroccan and Algerian families are related by kinship, some of which are dominated by intermarriage, especially on the border between the two countries in the city of Oujda in eastern Morocco and Tlemcen in western Algeria.
Some families used smuggling routes to exchange visits across the land borders, especially the towns adjacent to each other, such as Ahfir in Morocco and Boucannon in Algeria. However, the authorities of the two countries have tightened procedures on the border strip since 2013, after erecting a fence and trenches to prevent illegal crossing.
A trip to meet relatives “gets complicated”
However, Al-Sahli (76 years old), who lives on the outskirts of the common border, “always avoided taking the smuggling corridors from Algeria to Morocco to avoid the consequences of that,” even though the Beni Mathar region (the far eastern part of Morocco), where the children of his only sister live, is not far from the border. He mentioned to Aswat Magharebia that the trip to meet relatives “gets complicated from time to time since the land borders between the two countries were closed.”
Al-Sahli visited his sister twice, the first was before the closure of the land borders in 1994 and the second after the closure in 1997. However, he contented himself with speaking to his sister’s children, after her death, from the Ben Lajraf border area located in the far northwest of the country, which is the famous exchange point of greetings between Morsi Ben Mahidi in Algeria and Saidia in Morocco, separated only by the Kiss Valley and an iron fence.
Al-Sahli believes that the complications of travel have existed for the families concerned since the closure of the borders, and then the subsequent closure of the airspace between the two countries, noting to “Maghrebi Voices” that imposing a visa on Moroccans “may be met with a similar decision, and its difficulties will be similar to movement between Algeria and France in terms of complications.” Obtaining a visa, but the relationships between families are what overcome these difficulties.”
Mobility “was not stopped” by tense relations
The situation is different for Noureddine (68 years old), who lives in the Algerian city of Oran, and who has close relations with his cousins and clan who live in the city of Al Hoceima in northeastern Morocco. He believes that this situation (imposing a visa) “will not deter him from seeing his relatives,” and will not change much for him. He added that he recently visited them in Morocco, to which he moved from Oran via southern Spain after obtaining a Schengen visa for European Union countries.
The speaker traveled to Almeria, Spain, towards Tangier, by air, on a small air transport plane, to visit his clan members in Al Hoceima.
Noureddine continues his talk to Aswat Magharebia, noting that the means of communication, travel and communication “are available today more than ever before for everyone, to see family and relatives, if the financial capabilities are available.”
He adds that the tense relations between Algeria and Morocco “did not force families to stop exchanging visits despite the difficulty of travel, and the same will be true after the visa is imposed, including the possibility of a similar decision being issued by Morocco.”
